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Napster to Offer Movie Downloads

Posted by samzenpus on from the not-so-free dept.

sebFlyte writes "silicon.com is reporting that Napster is going to move into legal movie downloads. They are aiming particularly to tap the younger video-game generation."

3 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Future by someguy456 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Frankly, I can't see a major online content vendor not delivering video in the future. Napster and iTunes and all better be prepared to enter the movie market once the technology is ready (bandwith).

    --
    Robert Bindler
    A Computer Science student's views on technology.
  2. How about TV? by rjelks · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I didn't see television mentioned in the article. $2.99 for a movie...how much for a TV show? Maybe they could charge by season. If we're going for video on demand, I'd like to see some of the older shows. They can keep the reality TV for themselves.

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    Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
  3. Re:I don't see the interest for this being too gre by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am not saying this will never be a valid medium for movie distribution, but right now I just don't see the market being that large.

    It's a chicken and egg thing. There are portable media players that will play the movies, but they won't be popular until there are plenty of easy and cheap ways to get the content legally.

    portable music devices are a huge market, and CD burners are nearly ubiquitous in computers these days, plus you talking about the difference between a couple minutes and a few hours worth of downloading

    1) the mp3 player market didn't spring up over night out of nothing.

    2) DVD burners are becoming a lot more common, and will probably displace CD burners. Besides, other than capacity, are they all that different? Both utilize Shiny Disc technology.

    3) It can take many many hours to DL an unauthorized copy of a movie on the file sharing networks, but people do it (often to find that what they downloaded is not what they wanted). Some people will happily pay a few bucks to guarantee that their getting the movie they want, that they can find it easily, and that it will download in a reasonable amount of time.

    Anyway, these things just don't happen by themselves. A company has to actually try and deliver a product or service, or there is no market.

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    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.